How much has Humboldt County spent on processing cannabis permits? That’s anybody’s guess, and there won’t be any accounting anytime soon.

Will all of the public money being poured into regulating the cannabis industry actually see a return on investment? With the uncertainty in the market, there’s no way of knowing.

What we do know is that the County keeps shelling out tons of money to grease the wheels of the big pot machine they think they’re building.

The Supervisors’ agenda item from this past Tuesday merely mentions an increase of $300,000 per consulting firm that has contracted to help the idiots at the County process cannabis permits.

If you dig a little deeper – or read the Times-Standard – you’ll see that the Supervisor’s actually awarded $1.8 million more to these consulting firms.

It’s really interesting to see just how far the County will go, and how much they’ll spend, to try and keep the cash cow they’ve saddled themselves to going.

It’s just too bad they won’t go to the same lengths to try and fix our housing problems, or public safety, or the economy – or, you know, any of the other massive problems facing Humboldt County at the moment.

Of course, when the cannabis economy collapses, and the County government is out millions of dollars because they failed to get enough people through the permitting process to capitalize on taxes while the getting was good, where will that leave us?

Hopefully with new Supervisors, if nothing else. We can all celebrate their ouster while we’re on the side of the road begging for scraps.

Guess what? The County Supervisors ever-so-generously decided to extend the time-frame for Humboldt’s growers to apply for temporary cannabis permits.

The announcement was met with a collective “big frickin’ whoop” from just about everybody not seated on the dais in the Supervisor’s chambers.

The County could extend the timeline for permit application ’til kingdom come, if they wanted, and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to the people who need those permits to grow legal crops – or to the suffering Humboldt economy.

You see, the County has seen fit to create such a shit show that people can’t get their permits in a timely fashion – despite the fact that they’re being taxed out of existence by the very ordinance that the County’s ineptitude prevents them from taking advantage of.

Now, we’re beneficiaries of the cannabis industry in the way that most of Humboldt County is – the cash from that industry supports a significant amount of the greater economy. But from an outside perspective, how much would you like it if you were being forced to pay big, big money to wait in a years-long line in order to get permission to maybe start growing some pot? While being taxed on the crop which you can’t grow at the same time?

A local attorney, Beorn Zepp, who is presumably working on behalf of marijuana farmers to get the County off of it’s lazy ass, had this to say in this weeks board meeting (per the Times-Standard):

“If we don’t have some significant movement on the final actual permits, we are going to arrive at yet another train wreck that holds up the entire industry and the permitting process,” Zepp said. “… At the rate we’re going, the present round of permits are going to be being processed for years and we’re not going to be able to get this industry off the ground locally at this rate.”

It’s almost like Zepp has been reading THC all along. Or, you know, he just has a little common sense. Everyone can see that the County Supervisors and the County Planning Department are nuking the chances of local growers to survive in our area – but that might explain why the County appears to be so oblivious.

Elsewhere in the same Times-Standard article, Humboldt Planning big-wig Rob Ford reported that the County has issued 360 permits. If you’re counting, that means they’ve processed less than a permit per day since the beginning of last year.

We hope that you weren’t planning a goodbye party for Humboldt’s cannabis black market, because you’ll have to cancel it. In a market where little folks are pushed out of the legal process in droves, every single day, you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone who has relied on cannabis for their livelihood for the past decade isn’t going to just up and abandon their cash cow because the County can’t get their shit together.

It sure sucks when the Golden State looks more like a Golden Turd when it comes to the economic support it gives to the people.

Remember the decades-ling efforts to pad income and provide support to those in poverty, in the hope of lifting people out of dire financial straits? Well…California, for all it’s whining about federal policies designed to “hurt” the poor, has accomplished the exact same thing. Only they did it through idiocy and a blind dedication to throwing money at the problem.

We honestly are mystified when California’s politicians lash out at Trump for policies they claim target the poor. He’s a crook and an ass-hat, surely, but no more than a single one of our leaders in California.

This recent Op-Ed in the LA Times sheds some light on just how wrong California’s tinkering with poverty assistance has gone. Did you know, for example, that California spent $958 billion on public welfare programs? Or that 1 in every 3 welfare recipients in the nation lives in California?

Most damning of all, even with all that spending, poverty in California is getting worse.

Two of the biggest factors in poverty and welfare problem? Well, bureaucratic greed, of course. And, as you might have guessed from previous THC posts – the lack of frickin’ housing in California. Not just affordable housing, either. All types of housing.

If only our political leaders would listen to us. It’s almost like they’re afraid of our tinfoil hats.

A heck of a sobering read, if you ask us. No amount of Mike’s will make us forget all this – but we’re going to try anyway.

It’s been a heated battle so far, folks, and one that we didn’t quite expect.

So far, Ben Shepherd is in the lead, but only by a hair. We’ve got a three-way contest for Biggest Asshole on our hands, folks – the tightest race in the grand history of this prestigious award.

2017 Asshole Pat Cleary is tight on his heels, and ol’ John Ford and the Humboldt County Planning Department is right there with him – they are completely tied in the polls as of this writing!

Honestly, we thought Shepherd was the dark horse this year. It’s Cinderella stories like Ben’s rise to the top of Asshole-dom that makes this contest so special to us at THC.

Unfortunately for Alex Moore, and for those who think that blatant government corruption and interference in politics via massive donations of cannabis money is a bad thing, he appears out of the running. (Would it have been better if we blamed the Bulgarians?)

As a quick reminder, Asshole candidates only qualify for their impacts or actions in Humboldt County. As a true democracy, we allow one vote per person, and we’ve taken steps to ensure that their will not be a repeat of Russian influence or hacking of our voting system.

After all, it would be a shame if Patrick Cleary’s Russian connections allowed him to rig the election in his favor once again.Now, without further ado, THC proudly presents the candidates for the Biggest Asshole of 2017:

A perennial Asshole and reigning Champion, Patrick Cleary has continued on his crusade to subvert the ideals of the formerly community oriented Humboldt Area Foundation in order to forward his own dystopian political vision for Humboldt County.

Ben Shepherd

Ben saw fit to utilize his position as a Planning Commissioner to create a cannabis ordinance which led to the very profitable sale of his cannabis property. Then, he had the gall to try and shut down public comment in a meeting in which a community member brought up his impropriety and conflicts of interest. Silencing critics, huh? We’re surprised he didn’t call the accusations fake news!

John Ford and the Humboldt County Planning Department

Mr. Ford has the dubious distinction of leading a planning department that has almost single-handedly caused the near-total meltdown of a quarter of Humboldt’s economy. We’re talking about the cannabis business, of course. More on that here and here.

Alex Moore

Alex Moore was the recipient of the first permit under the County’s new cannabis ordinance; good for him. Not good for the rest of us? That Alex Moore has since spent his time paying off Supervisors to ensure a cultivation climate that is beneficial for him and freezes out any competition. Go ahead and check the campaign contributions for our Supervisors – you’ll see who we’re talking about. Not to mention the private fundraisers at the Pearl Lounge.

What a cozy group!

For a second year running, the Biggest Asshole of 2017 will be presented with the coveted Donald A. Trump Biggest Asshole Trophy.

Get out the vote, Humboldt! And don’t forget – if you think we missed out on including a meritorious Asshole, let us know and we’ll consider a late entry.

A couple of weeks ago, THC had some spirited discussion about the effect that Larry Oetker’s hiring at the Harbor District will have on public finances, and in general what the practice of allowing public employees to collect their pensions for 30+ years. Often, those same “retirees” are continuing to work full or part-time for another organization, public or private.

Say Former Public Employee #1 goes to work for a CalPERS agency, making $110,000 per year – not including benefits – and “retires” at age 52 with 85% of his average annual pay over 3 years.

That puts FPE1 at $93,500 annually.

Now, we hire FPE2 for the same position at $110,000 (even though in the real world he’d probably be making more). Meanwhile, FPE1 goes and gets another job with a public agency – CalPERS halftime at 960 hours for $55,000 per year.

That means we’re paying:

(FPE1: $93,500a) + (FPE2: $110,00) + (FPE1b: $55,000) = $258,500.

$258,500 being paid by the public for one position that could continue to be filled for $110,000?

But it gets worse. Let’s say FPE1 finally really retires, 13 years later at 65. But, oh crap, FPE2 now feels like “retiring” at 52 also! That’ two pensions worth $93,500! Plus the $55,000 that FPE2 will make at their half-time job, plus the cost of hiring a new employee to fill the original position, and now we’re looking at this:

And that’s all per year, for a position that could be costing us only one pension and one salary.

In all, the public would be paying FPE1 $1,215,500 for the 13 year “retired” period, when he was working elsewhere.

That’s right – these public pensions make former employees worth millions. But more on that another time.

It’s important to note here that the main issue is this: if FPE1 had to wait to collect their pension til 65 or something in order to collect our pension, then we wouldn’t have the problem. And we wouldn’t be shelling out $93,500 a year for a “retired” person who still has at least a decade, if not two, of years when they will continue to work and earn money from a different job, when they could still be performing the first.

The drain on public finances wouldn’t be magnified by having to hire one or two more people to fill the same job that FPE1 retires from through their lifetime.

We feel the need to clarify that we originally complained about retirees double-dipping by taking jobs at other public agencies, but as we thought more about it (and read comments from one David Tyson, former Eureka City Manager), we changed our minds.

It pisses us off that anyone is out there making excellent money after “retiring” from public service, while the public is often on the hook for double or triple the amount it should cost to fill their former position. (See all those numbers, above.)

Oh, we don’t know, maybe the answer is to tie the age that public pensioners can begin collecting their pensions to the same year that folks on social security can. That seems fair, no?

This way we’d ensure that the public is still actually getting tangible production from the money that we’re spending on pensions and payrolls, and would remove the incentive for people to bail on working for the public

THC supposes that consolidating the departments under one roof could be seen as a cost-saving measure in a couple ways. They wouldn’t have to pay as much as they are now for their incredibly high space rental costs, and they might get out from under some of the massive deferred maintenance needed on buildings. Not to mention the ADA improvements they’re mandated by federal courts to perform, even though they’ve done jack shit on that front.

(Seriously, check those numbers out: the County was paying over $397,864 per month in leases for space, or $4,797,204 per year. And that was in 2015!)

Of course, given the huge disconnect between the operations of County departments, we’re not at all convinced that putting them in the same building is going to increase efficiency in any way, shape, or form.

In fact, looking at the County’s hiring trends and how many people the County has been pumping into the Planning Department, you could easily say that the County is motivated more by obtaining a building that would allow for those departments in question to get even bigger.

And that’s no exaggeration, as you can probably tell from the string of new hires the County has been piling on over the last few weeks. In fact, THC counted (quickly) that four out of the last six supervisors’ meetings featured some sort of allocation of resources for a new hire.

But we shouldn’t be surprised by that, either. We went back and looked at the earliest pre-economic-downturn budget for the County (fiscal year 2005-2006), and found that the County had 1966.19 employees.

For the most recently approved fiscal year? They had 2288.78 employees for the adopted 2017-18 budget, and that will surely grow by years’ end.

We guess the Supervisors that ran their campaigns based on job creation – that would be all of them, mind you – can say that one sector has grown under their stewardship. That would be the County government, of course.

We guess you can make that two, if you want to include cannabis-related businesses.

But, again, those aren’t the kinds of jobs the Supervisors promised us. County jobs end up costing us, and there’s no guarantee whatsoever that cannabusiness jobs will be long-term prospects for the majority of people jumping into the market.

The upshot of all this comes down to one thing: the County is making land acquisitions to save money, they’re doing it so the bloated, inefficient, and very pricey departments can expand even more.

You know what that means, right? They’ll be coming for more of your money.

That’s underlined by the fact that the County’s budget has ballooned by $100 million from 2005-06 up to today, and we can tell you that a vast majority of that budget isn’t going to the failing services our government provides.

Yep, these folks – the Deputy Sheriff’s PAC, and the Coroner’s office – both hail from the same department in the County.

It’s important that everyone in Humboldt County follows the law – except for the people who are supposed to enforce it. Funny how that works, huh?

Maybe if the PAC concerned themselves more with the way that they run their department, rather than protesting and eating hot dogs, then they wouldn’t be experiencing these major screw-ups so regularly.